And You Give Yourself Away
by singsongsung
Summary: Oneshot. Serena's relationships with all the males in her life. "She knows it's not healthy, but she can mark the chapters in her life using the men that were there. She thinks that she leaves a part of herself with them every time they walk or she runs."


**A/N: **There's not enough fanfic written about Serena. I think she has a lot more complexities as a character than anyone _ever_ gives her credit for, and I think she's a lot smarter, too. I chose her side in the S/N/B triangle that spanned the books, and I consequently started watching the show to see how her storylines in particular would play out. I _love_ Chuck and Blair, but the fact that this site has been dominated by CB fics irks me. I can't help but try to remedy that. But enough about me. Enjoy, _please review_, and if you love this character too, do our girl a favour and write a little something about her.

**And You Give Yourself Away**

**:**

It's like there's a line that's been drawn, dividing, separating two distinct parts of her personality. There is old Serena, murder (kinda; she really almost thought it was at the time) and mayhem (definitely; without question). And then there is new Serena, with a big bright smile and a good heart. In between, there is a grey area that no one ever talks about, as if doing so would be on par with committing some sort of awful social faux pas. As though when she'd been away she was going through some sort of twelve-step program, recovering from herself. Everyone sees her as these two halves, nothing more and nothing less. Darkness and then light; she reformed. Sure, there are some constants. They think that she was always beautiful. That she was never smart. She's been branded and cut in two and put away on the shelf, because she's a pretty face, not a complex person.

The reality of it, of her, _is_ complex. It's heart-wrenching and difficult and most of the time she looks found but she feels lost. There are days when she wakes up and she doesn't feel all that beautiful. There are moments when she's proud of her own intelligence. Her good heart was always there – reaching out to her brother, to Blair – but so was the part of her that craves mayhem. She draws her own lines, separates her own self into bits: the person she was, the person she is, the person she'll become.

And she knows it's not healthy, and she would never confess it to anyone, but she can mark the chapters of her life using the men that were there.

She thinks that she leaves part of herself with them every time they walk out on her or she runs away as fast as her feet will take her or her heart will allow.

**:Keith:**

Her memories of her father are like a home movie recorded on a cheap video camera, grainy and distant but mostly joyful. She remembers his smile – it matched her own – and the way he called her _princess_. She can recall the nights she'd wait up for him to get home just so she could barrel out of her room and fling herself into his arms; she remembers the way he'd swing her around and how she'd fall asleep in his arms as he carried her back to bed, she chooses to forget the thin line her mother's lips would draw into. She can recall all the nights she'd wait up for him and he'd never show, so she'd cuddle up with her teddy bear and promise herself he'd be home tomorrow.

She remembers ice cream cones and dollhouses and pretty new dresses and socks with lace around the ankles. She and Blair had all the same things, the same sets of doting parents, but she remembers Harold's actual _presence_ more than she can recall Keith's. Consequently, it's Blair's father's kind face she sees when she thinks of baking cookies in the kitchen when she and Blair were four or modeling their Constance Billard uniforms the day before they began kindergarten.

Serena's most vivid memory of her father doesn't involve him being there at all; rather, it's the exact opposite. She remembers the polka-dot ribbon holding her long blonde hair out of her face and the way her mother told her it clashed with her blue-and-white seersucker uniform skirt, and thinking that the sight of the ribbon would probably make her father laugh. She remembers the hope she felt when she asked Lily when her daddy would get home, and she remembers the answer so very well: _probably not for a very long time_.

"How long?"

Lily had looked at Serena with a mixture of empathy and anger before she said: "Maybe never." There were no affectionate terms, no glossing-over of reality, no easing of the blow, and that was the moment she began to realize how her life was going to be.

It was her first bitter taste of heartbreak, as she looked down at the ground with tears stinging her blue eyes, pulling her ribbon from her hair and crumpling it in her fist, her fingernails digging into her palm.

**:Eric:**

Her baby brother is her favourite person in the whole world. She's so accustomed to getting attention without clamouring for it that she is without a single jealous bone in her body, and when he was born she welcomed him to her world. From the very first time her small arms cradled his body, they formed a bond she could never quite explain to anyone, not even Eric, though he understood it and felt it in that same perfect way. The pair of them rounded out their family and they found solace in each other so that when they lost their father (and their mother, in the process), half of Team van der Woodsen stayed standing strong.

Admittedly, she was not always the very best sister to him. She had her own demons and at times she could be self-absorbed. But she made sure to be there for the critical things. She was there on all of those nights through their childhood right before their parents split up and long after, when he'd poked his tousled blond into her room in the middle of the night and she'd pat the covers at her side, inviting him to curl up with her in the dark. With each other, they felt safe. Loved, even.

She tried to be there for him when his throat hurt or his tummy ached, though those duties usually fell to the nanny of the moment, and she tried to be there when he wanted an after-school snack even though she was not yet tall enough to reach the chocolate chip cookies, and she tried to help him learn, despite the fact that school was never her forte and often she had to call Blair to come over and bail them out with homework problems. There were a lot of times when she couldn't quite make it for him, and she hated that, but she put in the effort, _always_.

He was her partner in suffering through every society event and all of Lily's boyfriends. His was the hand in hers as they pulled coats on overtop their pyjamas and tucked pillows under their arms and trudged down Fifth Avenue in the middle of the night on their way to Blair's or Nate's. She was far from equipped for the job, but she tried to mother him as best as she could. She was fiercely protective of him, and she always will be. As the older sibling, she always saw it as her responsibility to face the world first, so that it could hurt her and spare him.

When she left, she left that job. She left Eric. Her mind was a mess as she fled New York City; she felt guilty for running away from Nate and their feelings, guilty for betraying her best friend, guilty for Pete's death…and guilty for leaving her little brother alone. She didn't know who would face the world for him first. He'd have to do it on his own.

And he couldn't, because he had a secret he had yet to tell her about, and her mind had been too hazy to realize exactly how tragically lonely the life she was leaving him to was. The night before her mother called her with the news of Eric's attempted suicide, she had a dream that she was dying, and at four o'clock in the morning she was already up and packing her things with shaky hands; by the time Lily phoned at ten fifteen Serena was ready to leave, but not quite ready for the impact of her mother's strained words.

Eric was the only thing that could have brought New York's resident bad girl back. It was the work of that perfect, unexplainable bond that was the immensity of her love from him. When he decided that he no longer wanted to live, the smallest part of his sister died.

**:Nate:**

When she was barely five years old, Nate ran up to her in the middle of Central Park and handed her a daisy before he leaned in shyly and pressed his lips to hers for a second or two. He tasted like the blueberry pie they'd had at the picnic their cooks and nannies packed them, and when he flashed her a grin and ran off to play he took a bit of her with him.

**:Carter:**

Shortly after her father walked out of her life, she met Carter Baizen for the first time she can remember. She was six, he was ten, and he seemed impossibly cool to her. Lily sent them off to play quietly while she talked with Carter's parents. Carter told Serena bluntly that he was too old for games and she beamed at him because she was already over those princess fantasies of Blair's. They settled on playing cards because even grown-ups did that, so he tried to teach her how to play poker and she failed miserably. As she giggled over her hand she confessed that she thought he was cool (in her six-year-old vocabulary, it was a word with a lot of weight behind it). He looked her over with a smirk on his lips that gently evolved into a smile.

"I think you're cool, too, Serena," he said. There was a pause before he added that he was sorry about her dad. She looked away from him and his knee nudged hers and there was something warm in his voice as he said sombrely, "Not cool."

She nodded her blonde head, chancing a glance back at him and letting him absorb some of the pain she'd been trying to hide from everyone else. "Not cool at all," she agreed.

**:Aaron:**

At nine years of age Serena decided she was ready for marriage. Summer was always the season in which she became most flighty; she loved the sunshine and the freedom and it probably (definitely) had something to do with the fact that it's the season people tended to disappear from her life, it made her want to disappear right back. So at summer camp she chose to change her identity a bit and make herself a wife. Blair was always playing at it, and in typical fashion, Serena took the more drastic step and decided to do it _for real_.

Her fiancé's name was Aaron and he had bangs that always fell adorably into his brown eyes despite the summer haircut he'd gotten before his parents loaded him onto the bus for the summer. Wealthy parents are famous for packing their kids off to expensive camping facilities for the months in which their children don't have school to keep them occupied. Lily was usually been one to hire an au pair, but Serena begged for adventure, so she ended up at summer camp and decided that she'd fallen in love.

Aaron adored her. He told her she had eyes that matched the sky and split his cookies with her at lunch and dressed up as a caterpillar on command because he knew it would make her giggle. She kissed him first and he seemed completely shocked by it.

"I've never kissed a girl before," he explained, staring at his bare toes in his flip-flops.

It seemed funny to her then. When she was that young, she hadn't yet realized that she always seemed to be one step ahead when it came to discovering her sexuality. Her impatience didn't allow for a slow build-up, and she didn't get dreamy about romance like Blair did. Psychologists would have plenty of reasons for that, too. At the time, she just kissed him again. He was so charmed by her that he proposed.

They married one another in front of all their camp friends, by the lake. Serena wore a pale pink play dress and a crown of flowers in her hair and Aaron dressed up as Cecil the Caterpillar. They exchanged liquorice rings and recited all the words they thought you were supposed to say a weddings and at the end he leaned in and kissed her, which made all the other kids squeal. His bangs fell into his eyes and Serena brushed them back for him and he told her she was the best wife in the world.

When they said goodbye she didn't cry but she almost wanted to, and she left her make-believe husband with a lot more than that liquorice ring.

**:Carter:**

Serena lost her virginity the summer she turned fourteen, the night before her birthday. She and Eric had been given free reign in the summer, something they'd had since she was twelve and he was ten, and she was holding court at her family's summer home in the Hamptons. All she had to worry about was the partying. In the day, the maids took care of the mess, and at night she could start all over again.

On the eve of her birthday she decided to spend some quality time with her little brother, so they went out to eat cake at a café and then went bowling at Mattituck, both getting so many gutter balls that they couldn't even bring themselves to keep score. When they returned home – Eric to sleep, Serena to prepare for her night out with Nate and Blair – they found their house lit up for a major celebration.

Blair called her name exuberantly from the balcony on the upper level of the house while Nate shot her a grin from his girlfriend's side and screamed out a birthday greeting, which was followed by catcalls from all of his friends, who were waiting for her at the door. Rolling her eyes good-naturedly and shooting a couple winks at the cuter boys, she pushed her way through the throng of well-wishers, happily accepting drinks on the way. Summer birthdays counted for very little in her world; they were an excuse to party, nothing more, so she didn't expect presents, but she had a few shoved into her hands anyway. When she made it upstairs to the balcony Blair and Nate greeted her with gifts, champagne, and one great big hug as fireworks went off in the sky, spelling out _happy birthday, Serena_.

"Did you two do this!?" she demanded delightedly, but they shook their heads and said they'd received a mysterious e-vite, but they loved her and happy birthday. Chuck Bass broke the moment at that point by showing up in one of his typically outrageous outfits and extending his arms to the sides, gesturing to his body and proclaiming himself the best birthday present she ever could have asked for.

She interrogated every single guest at her party, starting with her little brother and working her way around, looking for information on who'd thrown this together for her, a task which grew exceptionally difficult as she got more and more inebriated. Eventually, she gave up, and she was semi-sober by ten thirty in the morning, the point at which she herded the last of her sleepy guests out. When Blair and Nate had left not long after midnight they took a weary Eric with them, promising they'd take care of him for the night so she didn't have to worry.

She stumbled upstairs and unlocked her bedroom door – locking was a necessary step to prevent anyone from rifling through her things or hooking up in her bed – and stripped down, changing into underwear and a slip before she let herself collapse on the sheets, breathing deeply as she stared up at the ceiling. She was happy, but a little lonely, now that the party was dying down.

As if on cue, she heard footsteps in the hall, and she propped her weight up on her elbows, expecting to see a stray partygoer.

Instead, Carter Baizen sauntered into her bedroom, a proud, knowing smile on his lips, hands shoved in his pockets as he made her way over to her bed. "Happy birthday, kid," he murmured.

Serena couldn't help her grin. He'd done this. "You did this." At his nod, she asked, "Why?"

Shrugging, he flopped down at her side on the bed and explained that summer birthdays sucked and she deserved a really good party. He told her, as they both settled into her pillows and blankets, that he'd caught sight of her on that site (_GossipGirl or whatever_) and it seemed like he'd missed some pretty great moments in her life, and he hadn't wanted this to be one of them. Besides, this day that was just beginning was her actual birthday, and she shouldn't be alone.

"I got you a real present, too, of course," he promised her.

She didn't care if he was being literal at that point. She cared about what an amazing thing he'd done for her. She cared that she'd missed him. So she closed the space between them and kissed him.

He was hesitant, which was annoying and endearing at the same time. He was four years older, he was eighteen and she wasn't, this was her first time, wouldn't she want something else, this wasn't what he meant by a real present, he didn't set up the party expecting anything from her…

As she pressed her body closer to his, she told him that it was exactly what she wanted, and if it was in fact illegal in some way he should know by now from reading Gossip Girl that she kind of liked things that way, he'd already given her a party and this was something else she wanted altogether, and _shut up_.

The next morning he called her _sweetheart_ and asked her how she felt and made her a mimosa and told her he could stay, but she knew he had his mysterious places to go and his mysterious things to do, so she thanked him for the great night and sent him away, feeling strangely both full and empty, thinking that as much as he gave to her, he took the same amount with him when he blew her a kiss, slipped into his Aston Martin, and drove away.

**:That (Those) Guy(s):**

Every time she slept with a high school senior, a college boy, an investment banker, a guy who's career choice she couldn't remember…no matter who it was, she lost a piece of herself. The flirting made her feel good. She liked the easy power of it, the fact that her body alone could control the actions of others, the praise. She liked the _fun_, the game of it all. She liked liquor and whispers and touches that slowly but surely grew less and less innocent. She liked kissing. She liked sex. But she knew that a psychologist – anyone with the faintest idea of psychology, really – could supply one hundred reasons why Serena van der Woodsen had so much meaningless sex. Afterward she felt triumphant and satisfied but also dirty and used. She tried not to tie emotion to it. _Making love _was not part of her vocabulary or her MO. She hooked up and she moved on with her life, pretending she hadn't left little pieces of herself behind.

**:Nate:**

She can't be entirely sure when she fell for Nate Archibald. Something tells her it was a moment too early in her life to remember fully. It seems like a waste of a significant moment, but in the end it doesn't really matters. What matters is that it happened and it never seemed to go away entirely. And what matters even more is that he seemed to feel exactly the same way.

After she lost her parents (in the non-traditional sense of that euphemism) she had three constants in her life. Eric took first place without fail. Blair and Nate tied for second, equally of importance to her in mildly different ways. They were both best friends; they took care of her and she did her best to take care of them. They fulfilled similar roles when it came to being her friend at times, but there were differences. Blair was for homework help and gossip and shopping, for sleepovers and Audrey Hepburn movies, croissants on Sunday mornings, yoghurt on the steps of the Met, dancing together on Friday night. Nate was for borrowing a sweater on a windy day, for cuddles and occasional kisses, huddling under blankets in Sheep Meadow, jokes that no one else would ever find funny, whispering secrets in the library during their study hall period.

While Blair made falling in love with Nate one big fairytale production, it just happened for Serena, as easily as she breathed. It was natural, unmistakable, and pure. It gave her butterflies, had her dizzy with feelings she gave up on around age twelve. Nate always seemed like her other half when they were younger, and as they got older and she gained more experience, she realized that no one made her feel safe and joyful and complete the way her Natie did.

But she'd learned early on not to interfere with things that were unarguably _Blair's_. Their relationship was always uneven in such an unfair way. The more Blair tried, the more Serena got. Blair was admired by her peers and adored by her elders, and Serena knew from early on in their friendship that she was the only person in the world as they knew it capable of making Blair Cornelia Waldorf insecure. As Blair's best friend, she hated her role as that person. So once Nate became Blair's, he was no longer Serena's. She couldn't pull herself away from him completely, valiant as she tried, so her relationship with Nate became one that existed only in rare, stolen moments, little pieces of herself that she gave to him willingly even though she wished she wouldn't.

**:Chuck:**

Chuck Bass understood her far better than anyone else, and she wasn't sure if she liked that. He wore crazy clothes and he was a perv and they couldn't have a conversation that didn't involve him hitting on her somehow, but he also looked at her with such total empathy, and he was her friend. Kindred spirits, or something like that. They didn't judge one another. They made the same mistakes. There was sexual tension, and they flirted harmlessly, even though she was almost always the one to end it. They lusted after one another, but in a vaguely recreational kind of way: kisses, on the occasional drunken evening, and they shared a bed platonically from time to time. There were sparks but never a fire.

Nate and Blair were her best friends, but Chuck should have had some sort of special title attached to his friendship with her as well. Blair could finish Serena's sentences and Nate was her other half, but Chuck understood her from the way her eyebrows arched or her lips curled, and he embraced her for her (their) way of life. He liked the wilder version of her. He praised it, encouraged it, expressed his interest in it. Whatever she wanted, Chuck was game for it, and it went both ways most of the time. If she called him, he was there, and in the strangest way he was reliable to her, and she to him.

Though their bond was rooted in frivolity, there was an undeniable, unspoken earnest quality to their relationship. He always saved her from pushy, drunk guys who chose not to understand the meaning of the word _no_. She helped him stumble up to his suite on countless nights. Around him, she felt vaguely proud of herself. She was happy when she was hanging out with Chuck.

And she discovered, not long after she left the city, that she missed him, and she missed _herself_ around him, like she'd abandoned that part of her behind the door of 1812.

**:That (Those) Guy(s) of Lily's:**

After her father, Serena's mother had three more husbands and more boyfriends than she really cared to count. None of them were truly horrible. They never hurt her or Eric in any way, at least not physically, Lily van der Woodsen could pick her men better than that. They hurt her in smaller, subtler ways that probably need near as much therapy as abuse would have. Maybe something truly awful would have been better, because Serena's always had an easier time coping with tangible things.

They simply never turn up to be anywhere in the ballpark of who she wants (needs) her stepfather to be. They ignore her or they skirt around her or they talk down to her. Or they try to befriend her. Or they adopt the whole family into their crazy eccentricities or careers or cultures. There was Paolo, with his raw food diet and open mind, the last person she ever would have wanted to tell her secrets to despite his general encouragement of honesty. Claus with a C and Klaus with a K, one of whom forced them to move just so he could ski every single day. She liked him the first time he took them skiing. The other Claus/Klaus was a mess. And there was Samir, who actually seemed fairly nice, but Serena hated the easy way her mother threw them into an entirely different religion just to please her man.

And most significantly, they never stayed. They never truly made an effort. They sensed that she and Eric were broken down by all of this, and Eric's choice was to bottle it up while Serena's choice was to act out, and they both had that daring, stereotypical gleam of _you're not my father_ in their van der Woodsen blue eyes. And no matter how much they cared for Lily or her money, there was always, without fail, a breaking point.

So they each walked away, leaving her with the bad habits they'd introduced or taking with them the ability to stabilize her family.

**:Nate:**

Sex with Nate was over a decade in the making and it was as close to bliss as she'd ever been. It was messy, unplanned and drunk and fumbling, but it was perfect simply because it was him, and she thinks there is something so incredibly precious about that being the only factor necessary. But bliss faded too quickly and betrayal caught up too fast; they'd finally given in and now there would be consequences. She cried and he was wide-eyed sadness and hands reaching out to her, voice saying her name, but she fled in only his shirt, her dress in her hands. She took his virginity and left him with every feeling she wasn't supposed to have.

**:Pete:**

One minute he was kissing her neck and slipping her (Nate's) shirt off of her shoulders, the next he was foaming at the mouth, and the moment after he was being wheeled out on a stretcher in a body bag. After the confusing mixture of purity and promiscuousness that was her encounter with Nate, the last thing she wanted was to have sex with Pete, to let him break whatever she just built up with the boy she'd longer for since childhood.

But his death broke her a lot more than that ever would have, and for a long time she let herself believe that she was at fault, because someone needed to pay for that night, and it seemed like she was the one who'd made all the wrong choices.

**:Carter:**

Somewhere amidst the chaos of her life, he swooped back in with his typical nonchalance, a million more words in his eyes than he never chose to voice. He sidled up to her one day in an airport while she was studying a boarding schedule and she threw her arms out for a hug. While she was still clinging to him, he asked her where she was headed.

"Santorini," she divulged, but she didn't inform him of the reasons behind her trip.

He glanced up at the board, flickering with flight numbers, times, and city names. He said they'd better hurry, or they'd miss their flight.

Going to Santorini was supposed to help her piece herself back together. It only made sense to search for the very first piece she'd lost if she was going to find the rest. But Carter somehow managed to help her feel calm and fulfilled without reaching her goal. In between beaches and nightclubs and _opa!_ and scenery she could hardly stop staring at, she filled him in on the real reason behind her trip. He listened intently and nodded and said that he'd help her out. He mentioned offhand that she looked amazing in the dusky light, and she blushed as she glanced up at the moon in the sky, finding peace.

Serena's not a prude and she's never one to deny herself what she wants, so throughout the duration of their trip they slept in the same bed and they kissed on more than one occasion, and she got touchy-feely when they drank, using intoxication as her cover, but things stayed relatively chaste between them. It wasn't until one night when things went from fun to scary much to fast and there was so much confusion and the police were involved that he held her close when she cried, and then tucked his finger under his chin and kissed her and they stumbled into their room and collapsed onto their bed and she slept with Carter Baizen for the second time in her life.

It was more meaningful than it should have been, and the next day she jumped on the first boat she could find, trying to flee from those emotions once again.

**:Trey:**

He had a sweet smirk and a trust fund. His full name was _Thaddeus_ and he pursued her admirably from the first moment she stepped onto Hanover's campus. He was fun. She got in a little bit of trouble at boarding school with him as her mischief-making guide, but she never committed to him in any way, uttering the word _friends_ so many times it started to sound meaningless. He would joke about benefits and she would smile but shake her head. She couldn't be his fuck buddy any more so than she could be his girlfriend. She'd already lost so much of herself she wasn't sure that there was anything more for him within her.

**:Eric:**

She went back for him without a second thought. The single most important person in her world hadn't wanted to be in her world any more, and there will never be a day that she doesn't blame herself partially. As her train pulled into Grand Central she forgot completely about rebuilding her own self and focused on fixing her baby brother.

She lost count of the time she apologized to him, and she took charge of his life as she had when they were younger, arguing with her mother on every point, protecting him once again. She joked with him and made sure he smiled but the seriousness of it all didn't escape her for a second. She vowed to be there for all the critical things again, and she was. She was there to protect him when Blair mistakenly humiliated the wrong person. She was there for the moment when she and Lily found out that he was gay, though she cursed herself for the way it happened. She was there to shield him from Chuck's general presence, which was a danger in itself. She made sure to be there for him through boyfriends and high school and life.

Both of them broke just a little bit more when he tried to end his life, and that's not ever going to fully come back to them. But they put the effort in. _Always_.

**:Nate:**

The first time she saw Nate after her return has the basic physical effect of a dagger through her heart, and the first time they spoke was akin to another series of stabs. His eyes, his voice, every single thing about _him_ in relation to _her_ was exactly as it had been that night, and it made her want to pull him close and never let go but also push him far, far away. He still had that part of her, and it was clear he wasn't going to let it go.

**:Chuck:**

It was so strange how in the time she'd been gone and because of the ways she'd changed, her most trusted friend turned into the person she trusted least. The way he looked at her when he sat down next to her at the bar conveyed that he _knew_ the real version of herself was still in there somehow, and he couldn't wait to see it again. When he offered her a sandwich and she stumbled off her stool, he wrapped an arm around her, and suddenly it was like it was before, just for that split second.

He got her an amazing sandwich and sent all the staff off with a little extra money, and she shook her head at his advances like she always had, batting his hand away from her thigh, and then he said the sentence that changed it all.

"You worried Nate'll find out?"

And she shook her head even though they both knew that he knew the truth, and when he insisted they were alike she rebuked him. "…I'm trying to change."

Chuck's eyes had flashed in a strikingly familiar way as he said, "I liked you better before," just as he leaned in, his lips approaching hers quickly.

She fought him off because she didn't want that, she didn't want him, she was enough of a mess already and he knew too many of her secrets, and then she kicked him and bolted as fast as she could.

But she knew what she saw in the split-second of eye contact they had just before her foot made contact. She wasn't afraid of him, not really. She still had that same odd trust in Chuck Bass. He wasn't going to rape her; he wasn't going to hurt her at all. She was afraid because she could see in his eyes that she was scaring him, that he didn't recognize her anymore and it was frightening, because it was such a drastic change from how they used to be.

So when she ran, she tried to leave their history behind.

**:Dan:**

He came to her rescue like the white knight he wasn't and he seemed like exactly what her new self needed. He was a little bit shy and awkward and rambling and clearly infatuated with her. He was a good student, which she could learn from. A protective older brother, which she could relate to. He was someone who generally followed the rules, and that was precisely what she was trying to do. Dan exuded…goodness. And it made her want to be good, too.

It was awkward at first; she hadn't taken the time to consider that they'd grown up in vastly different circumstances and came from different worlds. Despite the fact that she was trying to tame down her bad habits, she'd seen a sort of freedom in dating Dan, who knew so little of her past, and who lived in a loft in Brooklyn rather than in a penthouse on Park Avenue. She didn't realize, until Blair was at Dan's side wearing a pretty smile and preparing to spit out poisonous words, that there was a danger in dating someone who thought she was something other than she really was. She could feel Nate's presence at her side, guilty and pleading, and then Chuck had burst out with the truth, and she knew it was, in part, his way of attacking her for changing.

"Look, Serena, _stop_ trying to pretend you're a good girl. So you slept with your best friend's boyfriend…I kind of admire you for it."

She could hardly look at him, or Blair or Nate or Chuck for that matter, but she had to, and all she saw in his eyes was judgment and disappointment. He'd built her up in his head, formed this ideal version of her, and she didn't live up to it. They argued, and he left, and maybe that should've been it, but it wasn't.

After she embarrassed herself to protect Eric, he saw another side of her, and they eased into giving one another a second chance. Even though she could tell that he was often in a little over his head around her, he was so wonderful to her that she decided that that didn't matter. He was sweet, and she wouldn't deny that she was attracted to him. They slowly figured one another out and learned how to slip into each other's lives. His family was fairly easy to deal with, her whole world offered a few more complications.

Nonetheless, she fell for him. She wanted him. And when another girl waltzed back into his life with pretty eyes and an adoring smile directed only at Dan, she was unhappy. With Dan, she liked to disregard all history on both sides, and Vanessa's appearance hit her like a slap in the face. There were a lot of boys in Serena's history, but only a couple important ones. She didn't know there were any girls at all in Dan's past, never mind one so beautiful and obviously into him. But Dan looked at her with earnest brown eyes and promised she was the only one he cared about, and she always believed him.

She'd never been patient with anything or anyone, and she'd long ago left behind her reservations, so when she knew she wanted to have sex with Dan Humphrey, she was _going_ to have sex with Dan Humphrey. But it was a bigger deal for him, which she couldn't help but find strangely endearing. She knew that it was his first time and she didn't really care, but what she found so sweet was that he wanted to make it special, something no one had ever even considered doing for her before. She saw it in his eyes as they laid there in his bed in his candle-filled room, and it took her breath away and frightened her in the weirdest way.

"It's just…nobody's ever looked at me the way you just did," she struggled to explain to him. "In fact, I don't think they looked at me at all."

And somehow in that moment they weren't such different people and they were in one world that belonged simply to them, and he understood her completely, puling her close and wrapping her up and holding her all night long, filling up her heart.

There were days that felt unbelievably perfect and safe with him, eating a picnic in the park together, kissing in between classes at school, curling up next to him and pretending to do homework in the evenings. But their relationship couldn't catch a break, and it wasn't long before a new complication presented itself.

The fact that her mother had once been in love with Dan's dad both baffled and disconcerted Serena. Rufus was nice, but Lily's social circle had always, to Serena's knowledge, been quite different. It also made her feel strangely close to her mother in a way she didn't desire at all. She'd sworn long ago that she didn't want her love life to be anything like Lily's.

Maybe that was the catalyst to her first big fight with Dan, or maybe it was simply the judgmental way he talked about her grandmother, who she loved dearly, and the way her throat tightened when she heard him speak. Maybe it had all been a mistake. Maybe he really couldn't handle her life, as much as she wanted him to.

**:Carter:**

His entrance into her life was brief but significant, there as her date to the debutante ball, and proving once again that he knew her well. He saved the day effortlessly, the same way he'd set up that surprise party for her. He stood at her side like a perfect gentleman, called her _beautiful_, and rewrote her presentation statement perfectly, but the idyllic evening came to a quick end when Nate abruptly punched him out.

As they sat together in a quiet room, her hand holding a cool glass up to his face, she realized that she'd missed him as she voiced her apologies for Nate's actions, and he shrugged off her words and came back with some surprising ones of his own.

"Didn't hurt nearly as badly as waking up that morning in Santorini…and finding you'd jumped on a boat."

She looked away from him, mind racing as she realized that Carter Baizen felt something more real for her than she'd ever thought before, despite all the time they'd spent together and all the things they'd done. She stuttered out excuses which he took gallantly, revealing in the process that her grandmother had planned all of this. Her first thought was of Dan, so she rushed away, leaving Carter with only pieces of her.

**:Dan:**

She felt a rush of something so monumental as Dan dipped her back and kissed her on the dance floor before he swept her up into his arms and carried her away. It was the kind of thing she'd been trying to avoid feeling for a boy most of her life, and maybe it was unacceptable for every version of her that had existed before that moment, but she began to think that it was okay with Dan.

And on Christmas, when he revealed that he'd written a story about her and he bought her a Christmas tree and snuck it into her building, she felt herself falling very, very hard. When they slept together that night in the winter wonderland she'd created, it felt like she had as much of him as he had of her.

Things shifted that day she revealed to him that _she_ was the one who broke into the school, easily done considering the key the lacrosse captain had given her way back when, and she saw judgment rise up in his eyes once again. She almost expected their relationship to unravel right then and there because she'd never been given a reason to believe that anything else would happen, but instead his eyes softened a bit and he stepped up and stood by her, and she found herself confessing because she cared about him enough to protect his future. A short time later, when he thought their futures were facing a huge change, he told her he loved her and she excused it as his trying to reassure her in case she was pregnant, so she kissed his cheek and resolved to forget those words because she had no idea what to do with him.

He was so good to her through everything with Blair, but he didn't realize that she was too concerned about her best friend's hellish love triangle to deal with the _I love you_ he laid on her only days after the first time he'd said it. Her mind and her heart were already full of Blair's problems, no one had ever pledged love for her before, and she was scared of those three words.

"Okay," was all she could say, and as her heart broke a little watching him walk away, she realized that she loved him back.

**:Eric:**

As good as she was at protecting him, Eric was equally knowledgeable in protecting her, so when she ran to him with the whole _I love you_ problem, he worked his way through it with his smart mind and his Ostroff Centre vocabulary to rationalize everything that was going on and assure her that their mother's commitment issues should remain Lily's alone. She studied him as she listened to him, strong and smart and sweet. If there was anyone she had no trouble loving, it was her little brother.

**:Dan:**

She went to him and asked him for reasons he was all too happy to give: "Because I actually like it when you interrupt me – which is often, by the way. I love you because you make no apologies about being exactly who you are. Beautiful, smart…_sexy as hell_…You're completely unaware of your effect on me. You're also completely unaware that you laugh like a four-year-old. And I love you because you can be with someone like me, and still be best friends with someone like Blair."

And when she said those three words back to him, it didn't feel so much like losing.

**:Chuck:**

When her pedestal started to get shaky and Georgina reappeared and began ripping Serena's reformed lifestyle to shreds, she fell back to Chuck, showing up at the door of 1812 with apologies on her lips and a plea in her eyes. He nodded and accepted her words with an offer to make her a drink, and she stepped inside gratefully.

No judgement between them. Never.

Admittedly, she'd kind of been avoiding him. She dealt with him where Blair or Eric were involved – Blair's pregnancy scare, guarding Eric from Chuck's attempts to introduce him to some slutty au pair – but she hadn't really _talked_ to Chuck in a long, long time. And when she did, he listened patiently and contemplatively, and he promised her it would be okay, and she almost believed him, because her trust in him never truly went away.

He did everything she could have asked of him and more. He covered for her as best as he could with Dan, picked her up when she was a drunken mess, got someone to write the SATs for her (even though it wasn't exactly what she wanted), and sent Dan away, closing the door in his face when she didn't have the words to explain things to him.

And when he finally confronted her about what was really going on, he didn't force her to tell. No judgment. Not ever. But he didn't understand why, she knew, because Chuck had pieces of her that no one else would ever by privy to, so this shouldn't have been an exception.

But it had to be, because this piece of her had died with someone else, and it was causing her breakdown. Chuck couldn't know, because she didn't want to cause anyone else's downfall.

When the truth finally came out, and she was surrounded by the three people who were, after Eric, her family, he offered to take care of things for her once again. She reached for his hand, held on for a moment, and noticed the way his fingers curled in when she finally let go, wrapping up yet another secret part of her.

**:Dan:**

In a way, a part of her expected that she'd ruin her relationship with Dan, because things never stay that pure and perfect for long. She was herself and he was himself and their personalities didn't click even if their emotions did. She didn't start dating Dan with the idea that their relationship had an expiration date; she went so far as to plead with her mother and promise that she and Dan were _forever_ so that Lily and Rufus didn't get together.

She supposed she should have realized that the epic tale of Dan and Serena had an expiration date, but she never could have guessed that he'd be the one to pick it. Maybe that was unfair, that she assumed she'd be the one to break his poetry-writing, black-coffee-drinking heart, but she couldn't make excuses for the way she'd always been – at least since she was six years old – and some things just never change.

Except maybe Dan Humphrey, who practically cheated on her with her nemesis, the girl who was trying to ruin her life. She stumbled into his apartment after a sleepless night, her eyes aching at the wonderful sight of him, and then Georgina was there. She stumbled through an explanation and Dan seemed to take her word for it, but he was uncertain when she asked if they were okay. It left her breathless to think that they might not be, because she had given him the very biggest part of herself – _given,_ not let him take. She'd volunteered those three precious words and herself and her life, rested so much of herself in his hands.

He didn't want her, didn't want _them_. She could tell that it pained him, but all she could feel was hurt and grief. They were back where they'd begun. He was handing everything back to her, shoving it at her, anxious to be rid of it. There was judgment in his eyes even when he claimed understanding. They were too different. He didn't want to be the one who held that piece of her because it was too difficult for him.

So he gave it back without knowing that she'd always have left something behind.

**:Nate:**

Finding friendship (and maybe a little more) with Nate had never been a challenge. Being with him again was like a breath of fresh, familiar air into her summer. He was all the same things he'd always been, and she felt calm and content around him. He was drinks by the pool and cuddling at book club, late night conversations, her date for every event. She didn't mind being his fake girlfriend, not at all, because the reality of it all was that they'd always wanted a bit more from their relationship. Being his fake girlfriend gave them something better than simple friendliness but less intimate than actually being a couple. Considering all they'd been through in the past year, it made sense for them both, and it turned into a fairly perfect summer for her.

The kiss changed things. She did it to help him, because he was one of her oldest and most-loved friends, but it changed everything. Afterward their was a moment where she giggled and his eyes were wide and she thought this just might be their chance, but then Dan was standing there with an irritated expression on his face that pulled at his heart, and Nate was looking at his older, married, woman, and Serena realized that all she and Nate would ever have was the in-between, the almost, and the maybe. He had some very important fragments, and sometimes she let him have more, but they'd lost the chance at forever somewhere along the way.

**:Dan:**

Sometimes, she came to find out, you could love someone and they could love you back and there could still be something missing. You could want them and they could want you, but things might just not work. In the beginning, with Dan, opposites attracted and that worked out fine. But they were too different from one another, so much so that they repelled each other instead. She was always going to be Serena van der Woodsen, she was always going to be a little wild, and he was always going to try to do everything the right way, and he wouldn't always be able to forgive her when she didn't.

She gained, somehow, from their breakup. She chose to cover up the broken, missing bits of her with strength, and it was at that point (with a little unwelcome help from her stepbrother) that she remembered who she was. She was _Serena van der Woodsen_. Dan had certainly reminded her of that; now it was time to show him exactly who that was. He hurt her, and she had more power than he really knew to hurt him back.

It wasn't easy to fall out of love, but it was remarkably easy to fall back in the spotlight, to take her place as queen. It was one of the few things in her life that had ever been so natural, and she thought that maybe there was some truth in that stupid Queen Elizabeth story Blair was always telling. Enough people adored her from afar. Finding her king was breaking her apart. She didn't want to try anymore.

**:Bart:**

It was different when her mother dated Bart Bass, and at first it was simply because he was Chuck's father and she couldn't really comprehend having Chuck as a stepbrother, but it was later that she realized it was different because he actually made an effort to construct a family.

He knew what it was like to deal with an out-of-control teenager raging through the world and still dealing with the long-ago loss of a parent: she and Chuck were so very much alike, after all. He, like Lily, had never really put in the effort to be nurturing, simply protective of reputation. But when they were together, Lily and Bart, they seemed to want to build something more.

Serena had issues putting her trust in Bart. Despite his being the parent of one of her closest friends, she didn't know him very well. As far as she was concerned, he was yet another man who proposed to her mother, who was going to change their lives and then leave again. But she slowly learned that he seemed to care about Chuck in whatever odd way he did, he definitely loved her mother, he was good to Eric. She figured she could deal with him, that they could co-exist fairly well. He didn't win any points for having bailed her out with that whole breaking-into-the-pool situation, because she hadn't wanted the help of money then.

But then he reached out to her. He put in a solid effort, not to be her father, but to be a father figure in her life. He wanted to make Lily happy, and he wanted to make her children happy, and to him that meant taking care of them. He left his home specifically to find her, to bring her back, to make sure she was there and part of his family.

She cried when he died, though no one other than Eric would ever know. She had never, ever mourned the loss of one of Lily's other suitors.

Maybe, just maybe, she could have let him be her parent.

**:Aaron:**

When she decided that she was _done_, Aaron walked back into her life. She had no idea who he was at first – artsy and broody, he reminded her roughly of Dan in a way that was both pleasing and irritating, and she couldn't help the intrigue she felt. Boys – and men, for that matter – were drawn to her. It was hard to keep away, especially when she had someone so pleasantly mysterious pursuing her.

The day she finally found out who he was she couldn't help her smile. Cecil the Caterpillar, her once-upon-a-time husband. Having him around made her feel young and optimistic and besotted once more, like she had that nine-year-old part of herself back.

But he wasn't exactly what she needed. He'd be so amazing to her one minute and the next he'd be with some other girl. He was judgmental – differently than Dan had been, but it was there anyway. One moment he'd be having fun with her and the next he'd be serious. It tired her, and she knew she was only dating him because she wanted someone to date, and because he had the ability to make her flighty and daring.

Then she realized that he wanted her to be someone that she wasn't, and the thought of going through that again made her want to break up instantly. He was like Dan, but also not, and she couldn't tell if he was Dan gone wrong or if Dan was Aaron gone wrong. All she knew was that she was tired of guys wanting her to change. It broke her heart, confused her head, and made her ache for an escape – which was why she said yes when he asked her to go to Argentina.

It was a bad idea from the beginning. Chuck needed her and Eric needed her and her mother needed her and Blair needed her, but she was conditioned to run away when things fell apart. It didn't work so well when one of her problems was sitting right next to her, whispering about the in-flight movie. She started crying three hours into their trip and told him it was over.

She almost hated that she'd fake-married him when she was nine, because no matter how little they ever saw of each other in the future, he'd always have that history with her. In what was perhaps not the most mature response ever, the moment they landed she called her home's staff and asked them to dispose of that liquorice ring.

In Argentina, she danced in long, flowing dresses and met new people and drank and won over hearts, as she always did. She tried to have fun. But she didn't, not really. She felt angry and tired and regretful, and moreover, she felt _lost_.

**:Dan:**

So when she got home she rushed into the last place she'd left herself, which was, as far as she knew, Dan Humphrey's arms.

They both really wanted it to be easy. He still adored her, and she still adored him for adoring her…and it just should have been _easy_.

But it wasn't. Their third attempt at being with one another only proved the reasons behind their prior breakups. They still had all the same issues, and they only gained more significant ones as they tried to ignore the smaller things. Their parents fell in love – and she guessed that they _could_ have made it work if they _really_ wanted and needed each other badly enough, weird as it may have been, but neither of them put quite enough effort in, and that had to mean something. And then Dan did the strangest, most out-of-character thing by having sex with her _teacher_, of all people, and she knew that was the very end of things. They'd been entirely messed up. If there was any sort of relationship left to salvage, it wasn't a romantic one.

She knew she'd been hanging on to him. It was just hard to let go of so much and not have anything to show for it.

**:Rufus:**

He was a pretty cool guy. He was kind to her, he was occasionally goofy, and he made excellent waffles. He wasn't perfect, but then again, neither was her mother, so Serena supposed they fit. He clearly loved Lily, and he'd clearly been loving her for a very long time in a very genuine way, and even though Serena had yet to experience something like that, she figured it might make him worthy.

No matter how great Rufus was, he could never be anything more to her than a friendly adult and her mother's new husband-to-be. He wasn't going to be her father figure, no matter how much of a fatherly guy he was. He just couldn't be. For one thing, he was her ex-boyfriend's father, and that was weird. For another, Lily had probably (definitely) been in love with him on the day she'd married Bart. Serena had seen her mother make a lot of mistakes and she knew that none of it was really Rufus' fault, but she'd never see him the way she'd seen Bart. He was fatherly in all the ways of sitcoms and storybooks and part of her ached for that, but she was too jaded to be receptive of it.

Where Rufus was a kind sort of discipline and family breakfasts and guidance, and where all the others guys were messes that never really valued her presence as Lily's daughter, Bart had been PIs and dinner parties and picking her up off the sidewalk and bringing her home to cake when she needed to be reminded that she was loved.

After all those years of her mother's men, and after all of those years of her own scandal and losses, that was the kind of parenting Serena had required and had responded to.

She and Chuck were so awfully alike, after all. His father could have acted as one to her. But Dan's dad would remain his and Jenny's, no one else's. She would be perfectly nice to Rufus and laugh at all his jokes and mostly obey him and probably come to love him in some way, but he'd never be her _dad_. It was too late for that.

**:Gabe:**

He was like a refreshing burst of history, Gabriel, suave and rich and reminiscent of the many men she'd been with in the past. He desired fun the same way she did. She liked him in the light, carefree way of a crush, mostly friendship with a little lust tied in and a lot of giggles escaping her lips, and it was such a _relief_, not to be totally committed to him. He remembered meeting her on a night she'd called herself another name, and he admired her sense of wild adventure and was more than willing to partake in anything she proposed. She found him right after she admitted she was in a rut, and she held out both hands so that he could pull her out of it.

When he said _I love you_ to her it wasn't a big deal, it was in the middle of the night in Spain after way too much to drink and skinny dipping and sex on the beach. It was casual and free and she laughed at it – she thought she married him, and she didn't care in that moment. This was how she used to be, and it was a wonderful feeling to have him right there with her, participating rather than judging her from afar.

She should have trust her instincts after she ran away once they were "married" (what _was_ it with her fake-marrying guys; some sort of complex handed down by her mother?!). When he returned, she reached out to Dan to save her, because even when he was out of her life he somehow managed to be in it, and the way Dan said he loved her confused her, but their parents were right there and she knew better now than to throw herself back into a relationship that had already died. Besides, she didn't have enough time to be confused.

There had been a few days there, a few nights wrapped up in each other, that she thought she might actually fall for him. And fall she did – for his lies. Gabe was scamming her, and all of her mothers' friends, and Dan's education money, and she had to do something about it. She hated that she'd been played – she wasn't the girl things like that happened to.

It was nice, the way her friends rallied protectively around her, even if she hated the reason. It was nice to see Blair and Chuck scheme together again, nice to have Nate nearby – not so nice to see Georgina, but tolerable. And as much as she appreciated her friends and the way they loved her, it didn't stop her from feeling vaguely ashamed. She was letting herself get caught up too quickly, and Gabriel certainly had never deserved her. She had to be careful lest she turn into her mother, and she wondered if maybe she should go away, or take a break.

Or, as her mother would have it, get arrested.

**:Dan:**

He bailed her out and brought her a dress and took her to the prom, which was sweet. He rambled his way through assuring her that she wasn't _irrelevant_ with the most earnest look on his face. And she smiled at him thought that maybe they could be friends, knowing they'd have to be stepsiblings, and beginning to believe that she was okay with him having some part of her, because at least he'd keep it safe.

**:Nate:**

When he sat next to her on the steps after graduation, thighs pressed together, that was the start of it. When he stood next to her in the party, his fingertips resting on the same cell phone as they read Gossip Girl's blast that blamed her, it built up even more. When he defended her to everyone who was shooting accusations her way, she felt it swell. But it wasn't until the moment where he was standing outside next to her, a worried, caring expression on his perfect-looking face that the jolt of _remember me?_ passed between them.

After everything they'd been through. The relationships, the breakups, the disastrous moments, the families falling apart, the trips across the Brooklyn bridge, their dabblings in the Upper East Side, school, society, and summer in the Hamptons, that moment still existed.

She supposed that would always be there, between her and Nate, that there wasn't anyway to avoid it. It'd been there since they were so very young. It would probably be there sometime in the future. No matter how many chances they had and lost, it would always be there. She wasn't sure if they'd ever act on it – they had before, and it was always explosive, but it was also so good. Maybe someday in the future they'd get it together. Or maybe they'd just keep stumbling into one another and feeling that jolt of electricity. Either way, she knew from the way he was looking at her there and the warmth that spread through her even in the cold night just from standing by her side, that he was going to be a constant in her future, just as he had been in the past. And she wanted it that way – the only thing left to discover was which way it would go, and she and Natie had plenty of time for that.

**:Chuck:**

Her once-close-confidante, perpetual saviour in the non-traditional sense of the word, and current beloved, adopted-into-the-family stepbrother had convinced her. Deep down, beneath all the _I'm Chuck Bass_, he had a sweet heart, and it belonged to Serena's best friend, and she couldn't have been happier. He'd always he important to her and like her in ways no one else could understand, forever her kindred spirit, never one to judge her, but he was now _Blair's._ And not in the way Nate had once been, in the real way. Chuck would always have pieces of Serena, but he'd have every bit of Blair, and that was how it was meant to be.

And it broke her heart for herself, her best friend, and for her stepbrother that he wasn't there to celebrate their night of graduation with them. Blair deserved him there. Nate wanted him there, though he'd be hesitant to admit it. Every other member of their class noticed his absence. And Serena? She needed him there; it didn't feel right otherwise, because part of her was missing.

**:Carter:**

When he first approached her on the New York streets before she commenced her post-grad journey, she felt a flash of something. Not that constant thing that was there with Nate, but something close to jealousy. While Serena could readily admit that Chuck belonged to Blair, Carter definitely didn't, and she felt herself sigh in relief when he revealed he wasn't there to talk about Blair.

With him it was give and take, push and pull, not too much and not too little, never any sort of definition in their relationship. But he had this knack for turning up at all the right moments that she couldn't resist, and a smirk that she found fairly enticing as well.

And he also happened to know where her father was.

She met his eyes, saw the sombreness and the gentle distress in his expression. He had taken on this burden for her, in a way. He'd fought to help her piece herself back together. He'd located her father.

So it really only required a split second of thought before she ordered him to get in the car.

**:Keith:**

He was the first step, the cornerstone, to finding every bit of herself again. Her first loss should be the first thing she gained. She'd been searching for him – actively yet casually – for years. She supposed she should have told Eric, or maybe even Chuck, but the only person she ever revealed her investigation to was Carter. She wasn't sure if that meant anything. She wasn't sure of much at all.

But she did know that she wanted to track him down. She wanted to look him in the eye. She wanted to confront him, to demand why he tore her family apart and in doing so commenced her undoing. Eighteen years old, and still a lost little girl whose father never got to see the funny way her polka dot ribbon clashed with her skirt. She had yet to learn how to love because he'd never been there to teach her.

She didn't know if that was too much responsibility to lay upon him, but she doled it out nonetheless. But what was he supposed to have, as her father, if not responsibility? She wouldn't let him run away anymore, and she wouldn't let herself be afraid. She was going to find him, and he was going to take the blame for the way she was battered and broken. He was going to see her the way she never let anyone view her, as someone who had yet to figure _any_ of it out, because she'd been too busy giving herself away since he had never wanted her.

**:**

She sits on the sand in a beach in Fiji, legs crossed loosely and knees pulled up to her chest, watching the waves lap onto the sand as the sun rises brilliantly over the water. Her fingers trace out meaningless patterns in the soft, warm sand as she thinks about the past couple years of her life. High school is over, but she knows that the people who truly matter will remain steadily within her life, and that maybe next year at Brown she'll meet some more important people. Thinking of significant people only sends her mind even back further through the years, lingering on the distinct faces of those who matter and skimming over the blurred ones of those who don't. She sees so many faces, but she can hardly even picture her father anymore. Her clearest memories are of his voice (_hey, princess, you waited up for me?_) and the polka dot ribbon grasped in her fist. There have been men in her life who matter much less, but also a few who matter much more, and she might just be realizing that now in the clarity of an tropical sunrise.

His footsteps on the sound barely make any noise as he approaches her, draping a sweatshirt gently around her bare shoulders – the morning air is strangely cool today. She shoots him a smile of thanks as he settles in on the sand at her side, his hand touching her back briefly.

"You're up early today."

She nods, and explains briefly that she was just thinking through her memories of her father. Just yesterday Carter informed her that Keith was now in the Dominican, so Fiji is a lost cause. He asks her how she is quietly, intensely, and she only has the energy to shrug. She could say more if she really wanted to, but she senses that she doesn't need to. She tells him she's still thinking about whether or not she actually wants to head off of this island. It's peaceful here: free and calm, a balance of her personality. For once, she almost feels complete.

"Whatever you decide," Carter finally says, agreeing to whatever will please her before looping an arm lightly around her shoulders and pulling her a little bit closer to him, letting her rest her head against his shoulder. She closes her eyes against the light of the sun and enjoys the feeling.

Even though she hasn't found him yet, she's feeling herself mature and ready put herself back together, and she wonders for the first time if she really _needs_ to find her father. She wants to, for sure, but it's become less of a necessity, and that feels surprisingly good. She doesn't feel as broken up as before, no longer defined in so many parts. She's just Serena, with a million different facets and a few she still has yet to find. Maybe it doesn't matter who's come and gone in her life and taken bits of her away, because she guards the most important parts fiercely and shares those only with those who are worthy them.

She's seen all of her friends, her siblings, even her mother deal with their issues and come out triumphantly, if not slightly beaten down. But she's always been too afraid to face her demon right on, because it all began when she was too young and too scared, but now that she has, none of it seems quite so bad anymore. In fact, it seems like she could be triumphant, too.

She doesn't know exactly what her future will hold, but by now she's got a good idea of the people who aren't going to be leaving her any time soon. Later on, she'll meet more people who will matter to her to different degrees. Now she knows how to recognize the people who are truly valid in her life, who should be there because they care about her to the same degree that she cares for them.

And maybe that's her epiphany, as she lifts her hand to the one Carter's got draped over her shoulders, intertwining their fingers and snuggling a bit closer. Maybe the important thing is that when it comes to her heart and her self, she may not be able to choose who steals parts away, but she _will_ be the one to piece herself back together and to decide who is deserving of the whole.

**:fin:**


End file.
